The Big Secret: The world is headed for disaster unless world population can be brought into equilibrium.

PRESENT MANIFESTATION: THE EXPONENTIAL RISE IN WORLD POPULATION IS THE DEEP UNDERLYING CAUSE OF THE IRAQ WAR

A. Some first-hand reports of the state of the world:

Here are excerpts from various books and interviews with Robert D. Kaplan on the coming cataclysm in various countries in the Third World: Kaplan travels by foot, backpack, bus, rail, taxi, and motorized three-wheel rickshaw. He is a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and the author of books on travel and foreign affairs. His articles of the 1980s and early 1990s were the first by an American writer to warn of the coming cataclysm in the Balkans. Excerpts from other of his relevant writings are also given.
  1. China:
  2. Pakistan:
  3. India:
  4. The World, in general:
  5. Kaplan's analysis of Mexico and its future and the future of Texas and California:
  6. Kaplan's critique of Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' thesis:
  7. Kaplan's analysis of the relationship between technological development and world dynamics
  8. Miscellaneous 1996 essays and interviews with Kaplan on the state of the world:

B. The world reserves of oil and gas are running out:

  1. For the key reason to why the USA is not responding to the energy crisis, please read the recent, tremendous book by - Robert Baer, SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL: HOW WASHINGTON SOLD OUR SOUL FOR SAUDI CRUDE, Crown Publishers, 2003.
  2. In a talk to a British House of Commons All-Party Committee on July 7,1999, Colin J. Campbell predicted the following:
    "I think that a price shock [in oil] around 2001, if not before, from Middle East control is inevitable and will probably trigger a stockmarket crash."
    See the full text of his talk, giving the basis for his prediction.
  3. Information from the Ecotopia organization on the depletion of oil and gas..
  4. The views of other experts in the field of oil and gas depletion.
  5. Duncan's Olduvai Theory of Industrial Civilization

C. The economic difficulties that will be experienced as a result of the inevitable energy transition from conventional energy (oil and gas) to renewable and unconventional energy (solar, etc.):

  1. Abstract, summary and conclusions from MIT Professor John Sterman's 1981 system dynamics analysis of the effect of the energy transition on the US economy.
  2. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA)
  3. Japan, a heroic nation in the quest for energy efficiency.

D. Global Warming: Pollution from rapidly developing industrialization throughout the world has now exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth!

  1. New York Times Op-Ed article of July 6,2000 warns of the coming global warming crisis.
  2. Chapter 1 of William D. Nordhaus' Managing the Global Commons, including an introduction to his DICE model. Nordhaus appears to be, for the time being at least, the USA's reigning advisor on global warming issues.
  3. Robert Constanza's critique of Nordhaus' Managing the Global Commons, including the DICE model.
  4. Here is a deep critique of Nordhaus' DICE model by the system dynamicist, Tom Fiddaman.
  5. Why are frogs becoming deformed and dying?

E. Bringing the world back into equilibrium:

  1. The high leverage policy for bringing the world back into equilibrium, based on Jay W. Forrester's system dynamics analysis in his 1971 book, World Dynamics. His policies are central to the quest for world equilibrium, but are politically difficult at this time.
  2. Jorgen Randers' present list of politically feasible high leverage policies for bringing both world population and global warming back into equalibrium. Randers was a student and admirer of Forrester.
  3. Overview of World Dynamics by three former students of MIT's Jay W. Forrester. It is based on Forrester's World Dynamics model, which was later extended by them somewhat in the following two books: Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits.
  4. Miscellaneous high-leverage policy insights of Prof. Forrester. Forrester is the originator of System Dynamics. The key models he has developed using System Dynamics include Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics, World Dynamics, and the National Economic Model.
  5. Willard Fey has a new approach to bringing the world back into equilibrium. He calls the system he is working on, The Ecocosm. Fey is a leading system dynamicist: His work is worth a look.

F. Some other sources of information:

  1. Key system dynamics technical details, together with some of the key system dynamics models that have been developed over the years. The site is presented by Tom Fiddaman, a rising star in the field of system dynamics.
  2. Rocky Mountain Institute
  3. The Energy 2020 Model.
  4. World fossil fuel production.
  5. System Dynamics Group at MIT.
  6. Writings of Donella Meadows.
  7. Abstract from a Wired article by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems on the RGN problem:
  8. The World Resources Institute.
  9. A heated SDsustain listserv discussion of sustainable development by system dynamicists.

(This web site is under construction. Please send critiques, ideas, and suggestions for links to Arlen Wolpert)

August 15,2003
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr47.html

Return to the Forrester-style system dynamics homepage.